[mod] Protection with land value tax [lvt]

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Casimir
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[mod] Protection with land value tax [lvt]

by Casimir » Post

LVT-protection is a variation on the usual protection mod. The main difference is that you need to provide fuel to keep the protection going (i.e. pay a lease of the protected area). This way, players who haven't been active for a long time will lose their protected area and other players can claim it. It also becomes much more costly and laborious to maintain a huge area.

This mod includes a crude auctioning mechanism. When an area becomes free the lease immediately doubles and slowly decreases over time. When you protect the area the price freezes in place until freed again. Say, player A has an area and pays 4 fuel per minute. Then after the protector runs out of fuel the area becomes free and the price rises to 8 fuel/minute. When no one claims it, the price will decrease to 7, 6, 5... Now player B comes and wants to protect the free area, she then has to pay 5 fuel/minute. She could instead wait for it to further decrease, but in that time another player C could come by and claim it for him. In this way it's an "auction" which works even while potential bidders are absent.

Crafting a protector node takes 8 cobble (like a furnace) with a MESE shard in the center.

github
download
license: LGPL

Screenshots:
Spoiler
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"Bid" is the current price. It decreases as long as no one is using the node. 1 fuel per minute is the minimum.
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Members (here "George") can build inside the protected area, but can't stop the protection or take fuel.
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Punch to show protected area.


Why would you want such a thing?
It seems to me that the question of protected areas hasn't been sufficiently answered on Minetest servers. Often there are vast areas around spawn that are protected but not "alive". People build something, protect it and leave it like that to show of their building. While it's nice to enjoy and display the builds, when many player do this the world will be covered by many isolated builds separated by clear boundaries. Then there are also areas that have been protected but remain unused and wild, they are just wasted for the gameplay and new players have to travel far to even start playing.
In short, many Minetest servers have a problem of urban sprawl. What I would like to see, but haven't found so far are structures like these examples: Bamberg, Arcosanti and Iblard - densely packed, a common style, few visible borders, close communities - it's not clear where one house starts and the next one begins. I don't think a LVT is sufficient to go there, but at least its a step in the right direction.

Time for theory
Game developer Lars Doucet writes about examples of digital housing crisis in his article "Land speculators will kill your game's growth". Quote: "The rent is too damn high in the real world. By George, let's not repeat the same mistakes in the digital one." (I actually made the lvt mod shortly before reading that article.)

As far as I know (I don't visit that many servers) there is no problem with land speculation in Minetest. That may have several reasons. 1. There is no economy 2. The Minetest map is big enough that most servers don't run out of land (and if they do people just won't play on that sever anymore) 3. Many servers use some travelnet mod to grant instant access to everywhere, so location isn't that important 4. Land in a crowded location doesn't give much benefit (small agglomeration effect) 5. Its hard to transfer ownership of protected areas.

Lars also wrote an in-depth four part introduction to Georgism: (0, 1, 2, 3) and on how and why a land value tax can and should be implemented in the real world.

Future ideas:
  • Prevent people from artificially driving up the price (START-STOP-spamming).
  • The auctioning mechanism could be improved. After protecting an area, the price could decrease further until anyone tries to interact with the protected nodes. The price would only then freeze in place. This way it would be similar to the Vickrey auction and player wouldn't have to be concerned about paying to much.
  • The biding price could take the surrounding area into account. This would give more accurate assessments of real price.
  • Allow members to put, but not take fuel into a protector. Support the hopper and pipeworks mods.
  • Somehow auction "improvements" (that is nodes and structures inside the area) separate from "land" (the area itself). So people don't outbid each other just because the protected house contains a chest full of MESE.
  • Alternative to above, asses the value of improvements. For example have a market and determine prices for all nodes, then count all nodes in the area and demand that price before protecting the area.
  • Allow player to transfer and sell the protection to others.
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